WCAG becomes the standard

In 2024, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was updated to require all state and government-related websites to meet specific accessibility standards. The standard they landed on is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, at an AA-level.

These guidelines were originally set to be enforced by ADA Title II in April of 2026. That deadline was recently moved to April 26, 2027. For more information about the ADA Title II update, check out the dedicated page on ada.gov.

If you work in government, healthcare, or higher education, you’ve probably known about this for quite some time and may have been doing accessibility audits and fixes in preparation for it. How do your sites hosted by OpenScholar compare with the new standards?

Accessibility at OpenScholar

Here’s some great news: the OpenScholar platform is WCAG 2.1 compliant at level AA or higher, and has been for many years now. Drupal, the system our platform is built on, has deep commitments to accessibility that we share. We believe accessibility is a mandatory foundation for any great, modern web experience. All people deserve to be able to have equal ability using and perceiving the web, and accessibility features are useful for many audiences in addition to people with disabilities.

We’re dedicated to maintaining and improving the accessibility of our platform by taking an accessibility-first stance in our development and quality assurance processes.

What exactly does that mean, though? In short, it means that if you’re someone who uses OpenScholar for site creation and content management, you won’t have to worry about our core systems meeting accessibility requirements. We audit the entire platform yearly to ensure these components meet the standards:

• Administrative forms (what logged-in users see)
• Login pages
• Research dashboards
• Search pages
• Site template starter content (generated on first creation)
• Site themes
• Structured content (like blogs, events, publications, etc.)
• Widgets and their standard usage
• “Get Started” pages

You can read specifics about how accessible our core platform is on our dedicated accessibility page. Even with all this technical compliance, we still need the help of mindful content contributors to make sure the content they’re creating is accessible.

How can I help ensure my site is accessible?

Just because our platform’s foundation is accessible doesn’t mean that everything you create on it will be perfectly accessible. Accessibility is a constant process, and we all have a part to play in it to continue creating a better web experience.

On our dedicated documentation site, you’ll find helpful information on basic accessibility concepts, tips on creating accessible content, and how to use Editoria11y to automatically find and fix possible accessibility issues.

Accessibility isn’t only about checking some boxes to make sure you’re compliant with the updates to the ADA—although that is mandatory once the new law goes into effect. Getting informed and taking action on any existing content on your site will help users from all backgrounds use and understand your content, promote search engine optimization (SEO), and answer engine optimization (AEO/AI features in search engines).

Need help?

If you have any questions regarding OpenScholar’s accessibility, or if you need help with accessibility on your OpenScholar site, don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team at support@theopenscholar.com.